LulworthCatherine Campbell

Lucy arrived in Lulworth by way of Wool and
taxi. It had been a mistake, taking that taxi. The ride had been obscenely
expensive, and now she had barely enough money to return to school, let alone
get a decent meal while she was here. She hadn't expected that. Her Rough Guide
said buses were scarce in the middle of February, but she wasn't gonna touch a
British car. It was stupid of her not to ask about the price. Stupid.
And
the taxi driver. Jesus H, he'd been anything but polite. Maybe he was mad at
her for dragging him out of bed on a freezing Friday morning, making him put on
gloves, undershirt, shirt, sweater, jacket, cap, long underwear, trousers,
socks, boots; he was pissed abut having to get into an icy leather seat and
wait forever for the cab to warm up and go through the cold to pick up some
girl who wanted to go to the beach in February. Perhaps it was just his face.
When he had picked her up at the train station he'd scowled at her in greeting
and she would never forget it. His face turned down, all of it: the eyelids,
the baggy skin, rubbery jowls, the nose curving down down down and the mouth
ending like a pinched roll of dough. Now he had transported Lucy five miles
from the station in a silence only punctuated by the second-guessing engine and
his phlegmy cough. She tried to let her mind wander to the open winter plain
outside the taxi's windows, but the windows were fogged up.
They reached the end of School Lane.
All the roads were named so simply: school, cove, beach, church. Nothing much
here besides the end of the country. Lucy had counted out cab fare before they
even stopped. She felt claustrophobic by the solid windows, the man's hot
breath blown by a fan to her face. She climbed out with her bag, slung it over
her back and walked around to the driver's window, where she handed him exact
change. "Have a good one, then," he said gruffly, and left her in the
white beach gravel and the quiet.
She didn't quite know what she was
doing here. Something, she knew it had to be something. She had always been so
reasonable. Getting away to the seaside was definitely one of her plans this
semester, to take in the romantic white cliffs of England and all that, to
picnic with her friends, maybe bring some beach stones home to Virginia for her
sister. Only she had woken up in her dormitory bed that morning with a bad
feeling and a sudden need to go, go now, to see the ocean immediately and it
had taken everything in her to sit among her colleagues in her
crack-of-fucking-dawn Shakespeare 301, to smell Tracy doused in her Chanel
knock-off, to hear Nick inaccurately interpret--again--one of the bard's last
sonnets; it had taken everything in her not to stand up in the middle of it all
and just run.
So this was it. Here, unexpectedly
early, on a strange coast for a holiday. She couldn't get rid of that feeling.
Perhaps it would dissipate once she checked in at the hostel, slid this pack
off, had some tea. Then she could enjoy Lulworth. Relax, she breathed. Holiday.
She had fallen in love with the word "holiday," the way it left her
throat in a sigh, the way it could mark itself upon the inside of a window. She
wanted to abandon the language of the U.S. "Vacation" was out, with
its sadistic bite.
The hostel stood at the very end of
the lane, next to an old stone wall and a few bare, gnarled trees on the edge
of a field. Its long, brown ugliness contrasted sharply to the whitewashed
farmhouses on the lane, as if someone had picked it up from a different, more
vile place, and set it down in the gulf between windswept Dorset hills. The
building was faceless. A weathered sign. There was not even a sound in the
distance, and nothing seemed to come from inside, no laughter or talking, only
the whistle of wind gusts and then, suddenly, a far-off cry from a gull, a
greeting maybe, she couldn't be too sure. She sighed. At least this wasn't
Oxford. It didn't have Oxford's throng of moving bodies, the people shuffling
to and from classes, the ceaseless hum even in the library, the constant sounds
of heavy footsteps up and down the stairs outside her dorm door, the hourly
crack of some idiotic indoor game of croquet. Who had that bright idea? Ben or
Justin. Perhaps it took the two of them to think of it together, they were
fucking morons. They were also off for the weekend by now, a large group of her
classmates. Edinburgh, they said, they wanted to go drinking. They had asked
Lucy to join them. Ben had tried to take her hand when the rest of the group
wasn't looking. She shook her head at him, at them, saying No thank you.
She hoisted her pack a little higher
and approached the timber door.
Inside, the building was made of the
same brown wood paneling. All the daylight was swallowed up as it tried to
reach the middle of the room. A few bare bulbs overhead were flipped off.
Windows rattled in their frames. Someone had left a game of chess upon the
lounge table and the black queen sat frozen in victory.
A young man walked down the hall
toward her, wiping his hands with a towel. "May I help you?" Drops of
water fell from his chin, so fresh-faced she could see the glow of his cheeks
in the dim light.
“A room, please.”
"Yes," he said. He
laughed. Flushed cheeks. Bright teeth, like a wolf. "We have those."
He walked over to a desk in the
corner, gesturing for Lucy to follow, and instructed her to sign in. "You
can have any room you like," he said. He leaned over the desk, his sinewy
arm lifted and ran a length past her neck, a finger pointed down the hall. “How
long?”
“Two days. The weekend.”
“You're American?”
“Yes.”
“Visiting?”
“Studying. School semester.
Just...wanted to take a holiday.” When she said it aloud it sounded foolish. Who was she kidding.
“Nicholas,” he said, and stuck out
his hand. When she didn't take it, he brushed back his hair. It was blonde and
thin and he tried to tuck it behind his ear with no success. “Farmer.”
“What?”
He laughed again, this time showing
all of his teeth. It made her uneasy. “Farmer. Surname. I'm your host, should
you need anything.”
She nodded, but did not give her
name in return, only signed it on the registration card and thanked him. She
picked up her pack and walked down the
dark hall.
In the first room the bunks stood
unused, the mattresses clean in their plastic nakedness. In the second room
there was more light from the windows. No one. She moved to the third room,
where she found yet another set of empty bunks. She shrugged and decided to
claim the whole room for herself. As
she unrolled her blanket, Nicholas appeared in the doorway.
"So this will do then?" he
asked.
"Yes," she said.
"Anyone else here?”
He shook his head. “There could be
others. Slow season.”
“Oh.”
He straightened up. "If you're
hungry, I'm making lunch in a bit. You wouldn't have to go out just yet."
Lucy nodded. She didn't want to set
anything in stone with him.
Then he disappeared around the corner. She held her breath
long enough to hear him walk to the other side of the building, shut a door.
The next moments were small pleasures: carefully arranging her tiny tube of
toothpaste and her travel brush and a bar of soap in the bathroom, rolling and
re-rolling her sweatshirt into just the right pillow, then resting on it,
studying the slats of the bed above her. Trying to remember exactly what
brought her here.
Then there was a clatter of silverware upon a table
somewhere close, almost outside the door, and then his voice. How long had she
napped? She stood up, reached in to straighten the wires of her bra and smooth
her shirt.
Nicholas Farmer had set two places at the table. Cocky of
him.
“I'm going for a walk,” she said.
He lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah? Well, you can simply take
the lane to the left into the village.”
“Just want to check out the coast.”
He pointed toward the back window. “Trail there, through
the field up Bindon.”
“Bindon.”
“It's a hill.”
“Right,” she said, not wanting to appear helpless. “Will
my stuff be okay in the room?”
Nicholas gave a swoop of his head, checking around. He
reminded her of a buzzard, something from a cartoon she saw once when she was
child. He laughed. “I'd say yes.”
She nodded, went back to the room to collect her purse
and didn't look at him as she headed for the door.
“Have a good time, Lucy,” he said.
She climbed over a broken part of
the wooden fence, into the meadow behind the hostel. In the matted frozen grass
a narrow footpath led up the hill, as if leading up to the sky. When she
reached the crest of the hill, the hazy line of sea appeared, sapphire blue and
creamy foam, growing lighter toward the horizon. Sharply below her was Lulworth
Cove, its water scalloping out the beach in a brilliant blue-green tinge. A
full seashell, she thought. She sat down and pulled out her camera to take
pictures of the little fishing boats anchored in the cove. She zoomed in on
them. They were empty. A gray boathouse, no bigger than her family's storage
shed, sat nearby. Also empty. On the opposite side of Lulworth Cove she saw
tiny steps leading up to the town, and what appeared to be the main road. But
no one was traveling today. It really was freezing, way too cold for anyone to
even think of fishing, and overcast, too. Her eyes stung. She could reach down
and pluck tiny boats out of that dish of water and flick them away into the
clouds. Lucy smiled and her face ached. She sniffed to feel her nose, and
pulled her hat down over her ears.
Now she was hungry. Whatever
Nicholas had been cooking had smelled wonderful—sausages, maybe—and her stomach
growled. There were a few places listed in the guide, so she stepped carefully
back down the hill, found a path that cut through the trees and ran along town
above the church lane, and as she made her way to its cluster of buildings, she
admired the thatched roofs, the painted walls and sweet blue shutters of
cottages, the neat hedgerow gardens under frost. What could a person possibly
grow here?
Her roommate, Angela, would have
liked this. Since Lucy had arrived for her semester abroad she had made two
good friends, and thankfully one of them was her roommate. It would have been a
horrible time otherwise. But Angela was fun. She was a lesbian. I don't
think we have any of those where I come from, Lucy had said. Angela had
laughed, showed Lucy pictures of her girlfriend back home, told Lucy the
girlfriend would probably fly over at the end of the semester so they could
party around England. Angela was taller than Lucy, and much more fashionable,
with short, fiery red hair. She had a job as a make-up artist back home. From
the sound of it Angela was quite the socialite, and even took calls in the
dorm's hallway phone not just from her girlfriend, but also from other
“friends” overseas.
Lucy's only other friend was
Suzanne. Suzanne was a head taller than both of them, with wide hips and
shoulders. She had a soccer scholarship, even though she didn't need one, and
dirty blonde hair and a nose upturned slightly, which reminded Lucy of a pig.
But Suzanne was nice and often paid for everyone's rounds at the pub because
she had a lot of money. Suzanne told Lucy that she did not have a boyfriend,
that instead she had a lover, a married one at that. “It's the way to go,” she
said.
There were twenty-five of them, all
from the States, all rooming at St. Benet's. Lucy wondered whether Trinity
wanted to hide all the Americans away at St. Benet's. She couldn't blame the
school. Her fellow students busied themselves every night with tasks like making
Pimm's on the lawn—it was a total mess—or playing war games while punting or
hopping the same round of bars. But Angela and Suzanne were different. It was
as if they were living on another level. They took the train to London instead,
and took Lucy with them. Angela did her hair and makeup. Suzanne gave her
glittery, low-cut tops to wear. They went to Candy Bar, where Lucy picked out
girls who were chiseled and tan like statues. When they dance with Lucy they
were not statues at all but water nymphs, and they slid their hands up and down
her back and ran fingers through her hairspray sticky hair, and she let them
put their little tongues in her mouth.
On Lulworth's main street, the Inn
was locked. Closed for water damage repair. See
you in March! Finlay's was on holiday. The
other shops were also locked and empty, despite the business hours listed. This
is hopeless, she thought. The trip was a bit of a disaster, although she
liked the quiet, she did, she just needed to remember—what was it?
Back home in Virginia, Devin was
waiting for her. They had been together two years. He also studied English
literature, more of a critical theory guy while she studied classics, and he
was one who stayed up thinking too much about the way things fit into place. She
thought he had an active imagination. It didn't help her here. He loved her,
very much, and she deserved to know how much he loved her, he said this on the
telephone every night at Oxford. Lucy figured he must have racked up a three
hundred-dollar phone bill by now, but didn't she deserve to know how much he
loved her, he said, and he deserved to be listened to and hear “I love you” in
return. Here in Lulworth, if the phone rang, it wouldn't be for her, and Lucy
was thankful.
When she turned back onto School
Lane, she looked the farmhouses as she passed. They were beautiful in their quaintness, and reminded
her of home. She and Devin would have a bed, there, in that top bedroom, and
under that window would be the couch where they watched movies while their snow
boots steamed.
Something moved out of the corner of
her eye. She looked sideways. There, on the side of the house. In the backyard
stood a child. Lucy kept walking but tried to get a better look at him as she
passed. He was a little boy, maybe five years old, blonde hair flopped in his
eyes. He had a stick in his mittened hand. With little stabs he chipped away at
ice in a cow trough. Suddenly he looked at her. His cheeks were flushed. When
he smiled, he looked like he had too many teeth. Just like Nicholas, she
thought. Then the farmhouse was blocking her view and she quickened her pace to
get on the other side. When she did, she glanced back again. The child was
gone. The cow trough stood untouched, perfectly frozen. Lucy looked up at the
windows of the farmhouse, searching for a sign of life, a light behind them. No
one was there.
The whole town couldn't be empty. It
couldn't be.
Nicholas had set two places again for supper. This time,
she wouldn't pass on his offer.
“How was your walk?” he asked.
Since he was apparently the only person in this damn
place, she figured a little conversation would help.
“It was nice,” she said. She sat down at her place at the
long dining room table. “But strange.”
He sat down and passed her a basket of bread. When she
took a piece, it was still warm and it felt good to hold it in her hands.
“Strange? May I ask why?”
“Well,” she bit off a corner of bread and chewed it. “I
couldn't find any place to eat. All the shops are closed.”
“Unsurprising, actually. I'm afraid that happens here
from time to time.”
“But I didn't even see anyone. I mean, nobody.
Don't people, you know, live here year-round?”
“Yes, but February is a hard month.” He heaped salad onto
a plate. “It's hard for many reasons. When one person leaves, others follow.”
“Why?”
“Who knows why people do what they do?”
They ate, and didn't talk. Nicholas had made a beef stew,
bread, salad, and brought out more bottles of cider for them. He apologized for
not having something warmer, like wine.
“It's fine,” she said. She felt lightheaded.
He scooted his chair closer to hers. “So, you're staying
until Monday?” he asked softly.
She was uneasy. “Yes,” she said. “But leaving early
morning. You know, school.”
“Right, of course.” He smiled and looked away. “Well, if
all the shops are closed, you don't have to wander around in the cold.”
She crossed her legs away from him.
“We could play games,” he continued. “Or I have some
movies.” He laughed. “I just find it so peculiar that you're here at this
time.”
“Well,” she said. “I really just needed to get away for a
weekend.”
“School can't be that bad.”
She didn't say anything.
“Anyway,” he leaned closer. “I'm grateful for such
beautiful company.”
Lucy stood up, and grabbed her plate. “I'm tired. Where
do you want me to put this?”
“Allow me.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He bowed playfully to her, and began picking up the rest
of the dishes. “Of course. Goodnight, Lucy.”
Why did he say her name so much? She turned and walked
quickly down the hall to her room. Inside, she shut the door and quietly tried
to press the lock in. But it didn't go in. It didn't work. Damn.
Lucy took an extra blanket from the closet and put it
over the other, changed carefully into pajamas while listening for movement outside
the door. She got into the bottom bunk bed but didn't turn the light off. She
shifted her makeshift pillow. She kept an eye on the door handle and drifted in
thought.
Her classmate Ben left notes in her schoolbooks. He slid
them in her copy of Much Ado About
Nothing after they all had breakfast in the dining hall. On little slips of
paper he would write times and places for them to meet, and Lucy met him. In
the chapel closet after morning prayer. The unlocked attic floor bath. Or most
often in his room, on the boy's dormitory. He had a single. Ben was quick about
the whole thing. He, too, had someone back home.
It turned out she wasn't the only one who did this. There
were scufflings at two a.m., laughter in the dark, eyes sharply cast down over
tea. Perhaps all of them did, and no one told each other.
When she awoke, Lucy realized she had burrowed down in
her blankets during the night, and her mouth sucked in the soft sheet fabric.
She spat it out and took a deep breath.
She was shaking uncontrollably. The room felt heated, but
not quite warm enough. When she pulled the covers off her face and sat up she
saw that it was still dark in the room, maybe early dawn, and felt her whole
head burning. Her cheeks and forehead were burning up. Feverish, even. Was she
sick? Her throat was so dry she couldn't talk. Her bottom right lip had
cracked, and now she brushed gently at a bit of dried blood on the edge of her
mouth. The rest of her felt cold, colder even than yesterday and she couldn't
get her shoulders to stop tensing and shaking. She couldn't let go.
There were four blankets on her. She went to bed with two
last night.
Lucy threw them off as if they were covered in bugs.
Nicholas. He had been in her room. While she slept he had touched her, put
blankets on her, God knows what else.
The creep.
She had to go. Now. She had to get out of here. Grayish
light through the window. It was too early to get a ride back to the train
station. She could kill time down at the beach, go to Durdle Door. Hell, it was
the only plan she'd actually made, might as well keep it, and Nicholas would
only know that she'd left but not to where. The Inn was nearby. She would find
a phone as soon as she could.
She packed quietly, now and then pausing to listen at the
doorway, and carried her stuff in one hand to the lobby. She tried not to groan
under the weight, but she also didn't want to risk Nicholas hearing the loud
shuffle and click of belt buckles. The hinges squeaked when she opened the
front door. Lucy froze. Nothing. He was probably still asleep. She didn't
bother to close the door behind her, just threw her backpack on and ran.
When Lucy reached the empty parking area at the edge of
town, she stopped to catch her breath. Everything was dizzy. The parking lot
spun in front of her. She laughed. Of course, no one was here. Why did she
expect anything had changed from yesterday? Lulworth was abandoned. Dead. She
was alone, and there was nothing. Nothing in this town. No one. All alone.
Would she have preferred the temporary arms of Oxford? The girls of London?
She started to wheeze and bent over. The pack shifted
violently forward and she fell on her knees. Why had she come here? Was it any
better than St. Benet's, her classrooms, that dining hall with eyes following
her body, a body which she swung to meet their expectations? Was it any better
than the bed she barely slept in, that Christ Church boy, and then
whatshisname, Thomas, the one who put his hand under the pub table and grabbed
at the crotch of her jeans? Or the couple she met one night in front of the
chip stand--that poor, lonely dog-faced couple who had invited her back to
their apartment?
All she had to do was take the train back to school,
finish classes, fly back home, back to Virginia, back to Devin and she wouldn't
wear makeup anymore, wouldn't dance with strangers anymore and when she looked
in the mirror at home maybe she'd recognize herself again.
Lucy stood up and walked briskly across the parking lot,
to the sea cliffs trail. A stone sidewalk took her up Hambury Hill, away from
Lulworth. Over the hill, on the other side, she knew was Durdle Door. She had
seen it in pictures: a great rock arch stretching out from the cliff into the
ocean, forming a giant keyhole.
When she looked back on Lulworth, she was surprised by
the softness of it all. The views of rounded hills and rounded roofs, all
bathed in diffused light coming up on the valley. It was so unassuming and old,
perhaps if there were people who lived here they all knew one another very
well, perhaps their entire lives.
Over the hill and down again, down the angled steps
anchored in eroding chalk and limestone, and finally her foot sank into the
pebbled beach at Durdle Door.
It was lovely. To the left was the great rock arch, bigger
than the pictures in her guidebook, unlike anything she'd ever seen back home,
and to her right was the thin stretch of beach, all washed red pebbles with a
thick line of black seaweed traced along the water line. The rocky cliffs were
white, brilliantly white, and yes, they were romantic, just as she thought.
There were no other trails leading back up the cliffs here. They were mottled
red in spots, and the buckled and folded strata shot straight up before her
eyes, layers of sediment forever pressed together.
Further down was Bat's Head, a cliff jutting out into the
sea and there the beach ended. She read it was almost impossible to go around,
but on the other side lay another beach, apparently, rarely visited,
inaccessible.
“Going to leave without saying goodbye?” A voice said
behind her.
She turned. Nicholas stood, with his hands on his hips,
wearing an old leather jacket. His hair whipped around his face. He bared his
teeth.
“I was just...”
He stepped closer. “Lucy,” he said her name softly. “You
look terrible. Are you okay?”
Her face grew hotter. She was sure it was obvious, her
being out of breath, flushed with fever, heaving, wild-eyed. “I'm fine,” she
said.
“I think we should take you back,” he said. He was closer
now, he could reach out and touch her if he wanted. “We should get you home.”
“Home?”
He put his hands up and rubbed her arms gently. “Yes.
Home. For tea. And breakfast. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Lucy?” His voice
warped. He sounded like Ben in the chapel closet.
“You...came into my...room,” Lucy said. She gasped for
air. Her throat felt parched. She needed water. The clouds overhead were dark
and more than anything she wanted it to rain right now, so she could just open
her mouth.
“You need someone to take care of you. And now we'll go
home and--”
She stepped out of his reach. “Stop saying...that.”
He smiled. “What?”
“This isn't my home.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. He stepped toward her again. He
stood between her and the trail.
She inched away from him, put her hands on her pack's
shoulder straps.
“I just want to help, Lucy.”
She kicked in the sand, throwing up a spray of pebbles,
turned and ran. She pushed hard into the beach and it slowed her down, she felt
like she had mud on her shoes and her legs were heavy, and her chest was heavy
like the weight of the Christ Church boy, but she kept running. She could hear
Nicholas behind her, calling her name, gently, then sharply, once like a
professor who called on her for an answer in class, once like her mother did
when it was time to set the table, once like Devin in bed.
“Get back here, Lucy!” he called. He was running after
her. She kept pushing, it was hard to breathe, and suddenly the giant rock wall
of Bat's loomed in front of her.
She was trapped.
Nicholas was right behind her. She couldn't turn around.
What he wanted with her, what he would do to her, in this abandoned town. No
one knew where she was. Her family thought she was studying. Devin thought she
was out with the girls. She had to keep going. If she could swim around the
edge of the rocks, around the cliff, she could get to that hidden beach.
Nicholas would be crazy to follow her.
“Luuuuucccyyyyy--” behind her the voice carried. “Let's
goooo hooommmmmmme.”
She waded into the water. It immediately flooded her
shoes and through her socks and she gasped at the iciness. Then her ankles,
knees, thighs. She waded out, holding herself against the sharp rocky
outcropping. She didn't know if the tide was coming in or going out, but she
kept moving, waist high. The pack was heavy. The water was up to her ribs. Lucy
gasped at the air. Long, deep breaths now. The air was leaving her. Everything
was leaving her here.
Her hand slipped off the rock. She bobbed underwater. She
came back up and sputtered, tasting salt, tasting blood, her eyes stung so
badly she had to close them and now she was blind, she didn't know where
Nicholas was, if he was still behind her, her lungs shrunk and fought to find
air again, she flailed her arms and pushed back in the direction of the rock
she couldn't see, and felt for it, and that pack was sinking her down but
somehow Lucy could swim, just barely swimming.
She remembered. A club called Heaven, somewhere Under the Arches.
Angela and Suzanne had gone in. Staying out for a smoke, she had said. In the
alleyway there were a few others smoking, and she pulled out one and put it to
her lips. She was new to smoking. New to all of it. She was cool, and would
return to Virginia and Devin would say you're so cool, and he wouldn't know the
intimate moments that had made her this way, he'd only know there was
something...different. As she reached up with her lighter, another flame
flicked on before her eyes. Need this? She remembered the depth of his voice. His skin, leathery and tanned. He had missed a day's
shave. His eyes a bright blue, his teeth too big. He had looked her up and
down, and brought the flame to the cigarette at her lips. He was wearing a
long, brown overcoat. She exhaled a thank you.
Her fever felt like it was breaking, she was soaking wet
and swimming in an icy sea. Oh God, how did she get here? She opened her eyes.
Nicholas Farmer was gone. She slid the pack off her back, felt it bump her foot
as it sank beneath her. Get to shore. Her arms were sore. She kicked
weakly. She had found the man's hand suddenly at her waist,
pulling her into him, pressing her against his hips. Sharp pain, unlike
anything she'd felt before. You like that, don't you? You want to be kept out
late tonight, little girl? You know you do. He had breathed hotly into her
face. With one hand he had held Lucy in a tight grip and with the other began
to reach into his pants. All the boys and girls of Oxford and London, all of
them before him, had been built into her architecture, she had made them,
hadn't she? She had placed them on her body with permission.
Beneath her a small rip current kept pulling, but she
pushed up as best she could. Then on the shore, coming down the steps, was a
family. They skipped onto the beach. Lucy could see a bearded man in a jacket,
his wife wearing an old-fashioned hat and trench, their young children, a boy
and a girl, in matching red sweaters and rubber boots. The children kicked up
pebbles as they ran, the man and woman held each other around the waist. Their
laughter carried in the wind. They swung toy buckets and shovels. He'd shoved her down. Her scraping her forehead
against his buckle, her running. She had ran past the club doors and back to
Charing Cross. Back to school, the train ride, how long she'd been sleeping in
her bed. Angela and Suzanne had not spoken to her for four days, they had not
even said goodbye when she left for this little holiday.
The family did not see her. Lucy tried to scream for
help. She coughed. Her lungs felt collapsed in the cold. Not like this. It
couldn't be like this, could it? She continued to swim, first kicking forward,
windmilling her arms, but the waves pulled her out again and yanked her forward
toward sharp rocks jutting out the coast; then she remembered if you swam
parallel to shore you would most certainly land on it, and she tried that for a
few minutes, until her muscles ached and tightened and stopped altogether.
The water felt warmer. It was warm like a sunny day down
by her family's pond.
She felt as if she was moving farther away from the
shore. Up and down she bobbed as the waves rose. She dipped the side of her
face into the water, taking some into her mouth. Cleaning everything. In her
mind (or maybe it was outside of her?) was the cry of a gull, and when another
wave came, she took more water in her mouth, gurgled it, spit. She felt her
head roll to the side, the water covered half of her face, and she felt her
body in the heavy arms of the sea, but with one eye open still she could see
little spots of red wool. The gull sounded, calling out: here I am.

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